A day at Weavers Service Centre
Recently, I had been to a visit at Weavers Service Centre situated at Charni Road, Mumbai from college as a part of our Dyeing and Printing practicals to gain first hand knowledge about the beautiful art of Block printing and Screen printing. Witnessing the complete process of transforming a plain white sheet of fabric into a beautifully printed one was worth the effort of going there in the scorching afternoon heat of Mumbai. To help you understand the nature of both these manual printing methods in a better way, I am including few lines describing them.
BLOCK PRINTING: It is one of the most ancient fibre arts in existence where astonishing designs and patterns are carved on wooden blocks which is then stamped in the print paste pad and the on fabric lay respectively. The process is not as easy to execute as it may seem. Precision and calculation are very essential to print accurately.
SCREEN PRINTING: Also known as a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of nylon or other fine mesh with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance. Ink is forced into the mesh openings by the fill blade or squeegee and onto the printing surface during the squeegee stroke. A number of screens can be used to produce a multi colored image.
You may relate to these methods more easily after browsing through the photo gallery attached in this post. It was an amazing trip for me. Hope you enjoyed reading about it. For any doubts regarding these topics, you can write in to me at srishti@esbe.in .Would love to help you. Thanks for reading!
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- Block Printing: Print paste
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- Block Printing: Filling colors using the fill in block
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- Block Printing: The complete design outline
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- Block Printing: Dye pad used to prepare the print paste for the block to be stamped upon it.
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- Screen Printing: Ready for the market
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- Screen Printing: The final 3 color design
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- Screen Printing: Filling orange dye using a squeegee
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- Screen Printing: Fill in screen 3 of the same design printed previously
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- Block Printing: stamping the outline design using a wooden block
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- Block Printing: Placing the block with precision is very essential
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- Some more intricately carved blocks
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- Block Printing: Placing the block around the corner of the border
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- Block Printing: Small errors due to misplaced block
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- Block Printing: Border
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- Color samples
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- Different color dyes
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- Screen Printing: Color fill using a second screen of the same design structure
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- Binder
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- Red color filled in by me :-)
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- Block Printing: Outline and fill in block used in the next design
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- Block Printing: The four stages of one design-outline, fill 1, fill 2, background fill
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- Motif printed by me using a wooden block
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- Dye
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- Fabric lay pinned to the table
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- Screen Printing: The outline of the design
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- Screen Printing: The marvelous freshly printed design
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- Screen Printing: The screen used to print the design on the fabric.
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- Screen Printing: Squeegee
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- Wooden blocks
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- Tons of blocks
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- Weaver’s Service Centre, Charniroad, Mumbai
